So, I've been thinking about the movie Farinelli for a while--partly because I show it to my students and their reactions are always so fascinating, but particularly at the moment since one of my UG supervisees is writing a dissertation on it.
There being no castrati around these days, Farinelli's voice was created by blending a soprano and a countertenor (courtesy of IRCAM). This weird sound doesn't always sync with the actor's lips. As my colleague CM pointed out, synchronized sound/lips is an obsession of Hollywood rather than of European cinema: it's just not considered important in Euro film.
Anyway, I've been wondering about this recently particularly in relation to two theories:
1. Donna Haraway's work on cyborgs
2. fragmented body (Lacan) - thanks to CM for this one.
Got a few ideas on this--not sure whether it's enough to make into a paper yet. Had my student gone down either of these avenues, I wouldn't be thinking about this now (ethics)....
The fragmented body idea is possibly the most fruitful initially, but I think the cyborg has mileage too. The question is what exactly.
This might turn into a paper someday. At the moment, I should be working on a paper for this conference.
Monday 5 March 2007
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